TV News LIES

Millions of files related to the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein suggest the existence of a “global criminal enterprise” that carried out acts meeting the legal threshold of crimes against humanity, a panel of independent experts appointed by the United Nations human rights council has said.

The experts said crimes outlined in documents released by the US justice department were committed against a backdrop of supremacist beliefs, racism, corruption and extreme misogyny. The crimes, they said, showed a commodification and dehumanisation of women and girls.

“So grave is the scale, nature, systematic character, and transnational reach of these atrocities against women and girls, that a number of them may reasonably meet the legal threshold of crimes against humanity,” they said in a statement.

The experts said the allegations contained in the files require an independent, thorough and impartial investigation, and said inquiries should also be launched into how it was possible for such crimes to be committed for so long.

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Sami al-Saei said he heard the Israeli prison guards who raped him laughing through the assault, before they left him lying blindfolded, handcuffed and in agony on the floor to take a cigarette break.

At least one of the group knew a crime was being committed and intervened, not to stop the torture but to prevent its documentation. Al-Saei said he heard the man warning others “don’t take a photo, don’t take a photo” as they attacked.

He bled from his rectum for more than three weeks after the assault, which happened soon after he was detained in February 2024. He described sexual torture that lasted more than 20 minutes including beatings on his buttocks, a guard applying extreme pressure to his genitals, and forced anal penetration with two different objects.

“I tried to prevent them by clenching my muscles (in my anus), but I could not. They forced it in very deep, it was extremely painful,” he said in an interview about his ordeal. “I don’t know how loudly I screamed from the pain.”

It left him in so much pain that he collapsed twice when ordered to stand up and walk afterwards. Moved to an overcrowded cell, al-Saei said he received no medical treatment and was forced to use wads of toilet paper to staunch the blood.

The 47-year-old father of six was held without charge or trial until June 2025. About 40 days after his release, he posted a video on TikTok detailing the attack, defying the extreme social stigma and Israeli warnings against going public about abuse in jails.

“I could not stay silent. I have a moral responsibility to say what happened to me and other prisoners,” he said.

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The Israeli Prison Service has begun preparations to introduce the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners, Israeli media reported on Sunday.

According to Israel's Channel 13, preparations include the creation of a facility dubbed "Israel's Green Mile", where executions will take place. 

Training and procedural preparations have also started, while a delegation from the prison service is expected to visit an East Asian country to study the legal and regulatory framework for implementing capital punishment, the report added.

The move follows the Knesset’s approval of the death penalty bill in its first reading last year, with 39 MPs in favour and 16 against.

The bill must pass two further readings before becoming law.

The report added that executions will be carried out by hanging, with three guards pressing the trigger simultaneously.

Specialist teams, composed entirely of volunteers, will be assigned to the task.

An Israeli source told the channel that death sentences will be carried out within 90 days of the final verdict.

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Huda Abu Abed feared only long waits and Israeli checks when she was told she could return to Gaza after two years in Egypt.

The 57-year-old Palestinian heart patient expected delays at the Rafah crossing, but she never imagined being blindfolded, interrogated for hours, witnessing her daughter beaten, and having her belongings confiscated.

Abu Abed had been evacuated to Egypt during the genocide for urgent medical treatment, accompanied by her daughter. 

She was among the first group of Palestinians contacted by the Palestinian embassy in Egypt to return on Monday, following the partial reopening of the Rafah crossing – the first since May 2024.

The crossing reopened under heavy Israeli restrictions and monitoring, limiting the number of people allowed to enter or exit, and subjecting returnees to physical searches at a checkpoint in Rafah.

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At least 12 Palestinians were killed and several more injured across the Gaza Strip on Sunday as the Israeli military said it carried out airstrikes in response to ceasefire violations by Hamas.

The Gaza civil defence agency said five people were killed and several others hurt when an airstrike targeted a tent sheltering displaced people in the northern city of Jabaliya.

According to the agency, which operates as a rescue force under Hamas authorities, five more people were killed and several injured in a separate early morning strike in the southern city of Khan Younis. It said one more person was killed after Israeli shelling in Gaza City, while one person was killed by Israeli gunfire in Beit Lahia.

Hazem Qassem, a Hamas spokesperson in Gaza, accused Israel of committing a new massacre against displaced Palestinians, calling it a serious breach of the ceasefire days before the first meeting of Donald Trump’s Board of Peace.

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In their time as real estate brokers, the Israeli-American Alexander brothers – twins Alon and Oren and older brother Tal – were known as “closers”, the salesmen who could a get a sale over finish line, often to wealthy hedge funders who were then making hay in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.

Their technique, one real estate expert explained outside the 26th floor of the federal court house in lower Manhattan last week, was based on the sense that the property salesmen “were just like their clients” – young, eager and successful. Kim Kardashian and then-husband Kanye West, Jared and Ivanka Trump were clients.

And like many, they were party animals. Nightclubs in Manhattan, the Hamptons, Miami, Aspen, Tulum and Ibiza were seasonal stops. Tal and Oren, 38, were profiled in the New York Times on “How Two Luxury Real Estate Agents Spend Their Sundays”. The Wall Street Journal followed on the family’s $31m sale of their Miami beach home. US Vogue featured Oren’s wedding to a Brazilian model.

But a far nastier picture of their high life has been on display in court for the past few weeks, where the three brothers are on trial for sex trafficking. Prosecutors have accused each of the three brothers of violent, forcible rape of at least 10 women each and in some cases of threatening them if they spoke of their experiences.

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